


Five Times Batman Saved Scarecrow (And One Time Jonathan Crane Saved Bruce Wayne)

by orphan_account



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Batman Begins (2005), Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: Five Times, Hallucinations, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 23:27:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6631438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, how something more than a truce is formed between two alter egos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Batman Saved Scarecrow (And One Time Jonathan Crane Saved Bruce Wayne)

1.

Jonathan knows he should be dead. He wonders, often, why he isn't. Really, it all comes down to who the Batman is feeling merciful towards today, or has conveniently forgotten about.  
The doctor is holed up in a horrendous excuse for an "apartment" on the outskirts of the Narrows (rather fitting, he thinks) with nothing but a cot, a desk, a bathroom and his mask. And his glasses too; it's a marvel they aren't broken.

He needs money, so disgusted as it makes him, he's been doing work for any petty criminal with the courage to seek him out. Nothing genocidal or bound to ensure mass panic (look where that got him), but the odd antidote, poison- he also seems to have become Gotham's illegal dealer for legal drugs (which is funny because isn't that what he's always been?). Stuff that he once would have sat back in his office chair, tilted his head, put on his best psychiatrist tone and prescribed. Nothing's changed, he's still providing medicine for the crazies, except he just now happens to now be one of them.  
 Crane accepts these criminals are paranoid and just love a good rooftop to meet on. Makes them feel powerful, dramatic, in control. He goes along with this- maybe he has a deathwish for not turning up protected but they don't know that, they've seen what he can do and has done and that's unfortunately reassurance enough that they won't kill him.

"Say, Crane, you think you could get me a few more bags of my meds?" one of his newer customers leers. "I need em soon cause I'm leaving this shit city behind for a while. Can ya do it?"

Jonathan can barely answer before the thug moves closer. He can smell the alcohol on the guy's breath as he draws near and grabs a hold of the doctor's lapels.

"What I meant to say was, do it."

Crane licks his lips, holding up his hands. "If you'd just let me go-"

The guy snarls, snarls like a fucking wolf and that's when Jonathan knows this one is here to beat him up whether he does what he wants or not. "Don't play games with me. I want them by tomorrow."

"That might prove difficult."

Jonathan doesn't like the knife currently digging into his throat. He is rather more fond of the giant black silhouette that knocks the snarling madman off him and down to the traffic below. That's warning enough to get the remaining cronies scrambling away in terror.

"I suppose I should thank you," Crane says curtly. He picks his glasses up from the ground and wipes them with his sleeve.

"People like that don't deserve medication," Batman says. Jonathan disagrees- everyone deserves medicine. And he deserves the money. He needs it. He's tired and angry, knowing that he won't eat tonight.

He's ready to open his mouth and say this, but the Bat has gone.

 

2.

Jonathan later ponders the fact that if Batman had not gotten that truck out the way, he'd be dead right now.

No ulterior motives to Jonathan's late night wandering this time, except he can't sleep and he'd rather experience his nightmares away from a cramped pitch-black room with a thin blanket.

He'd been trudging through a subway a few blocks away from his place when a truck had careered towards him, headlights glaring. He froze, shielding his eyes with a shaky hand, fully expecting the vehicle to collide with him.

It didn't. The unmistakable silhouette of Gotham's infamous rodent vigilante, astride a sleek black motorbike, had forced the truck onto its side with a spray of well aimed (what looked like) shards of metal and some kind of grenade. Jonathan didn't need to be told to get out of there before the truck exploded- the Bat had already sped away, thankfully not noticing Crane.

He guesses that truck would have been filled with criminals or the Bat would never have gotten involved, but he can't tell whether it was actually intending to hit him.

A little shaken but otherwise unhurt, Jonathan supposes he has to feel grateful. He sighs, curls back under the covers and still can't figure out if he is glad he wasn't hit, or disheartened.

  
3.

Scarecrow is doing this. It's Scarecrow. In some tiny corner of his mind, held hostage, cowers Jonathan as his hideous alter ego takes control of his body. There is a lot of screaming that renders his throat raw, tearing at his skin because he can feel crows pecking at him, like they might a rotting corpse.

He repeats it in his head over and over as his body jerks away from imaginary predators and Scarecrow hisses through clenched teeth. It's the Scarecrow, it's not him.  
Jonathan doesn't have a chance to warn the Bat about this- he doesn't really want to except he'd rather not be pinned harshly against a wall like he is right now.

"What are you doing?" the Batman rasps.

Jonathan wants to scream leave me alone but he's not the one in control right now. Thus, his problem.

"Get away, Bat-man," breathes the Scarecrow through a pained grin, "I'm doing my job." _Scaring away hallucinatory crows._

Jonathan just wants to run, to get away from this awful place and away from the terrifying Bat.

"Screaming and crying doesn't seem like something in a psychiatrist's job description," the masked man deadpans.  
Crane laughs, a hoarse and unwise sound that racks his body with coughs after. The Scarecrow vanishes, conquered, it seems, by a little dark humour.  
Jonathan finds that funny too, so funny that now he can't stop laughing; and the Batman has released him with unease and what must be disgust.

He is left alone, coughing and trying to regain steady breathing. He hates this. He _hates_ it.

  
4.

"Crane, what have you been doing?"

Jonathan is so terrified (can he not even be allowed to _sleep_ without being disturbed like this?) that he doesn't hear a word and sits up in panic, heart hammering an irregular beat in his chest.

Batman repeats himself.

"I don't know what you mean," Jonathan says slowly.  
The shadow moves closer and his own eyes widen, hands automatically going up to defend himself. _Ah, he's really ruined, isn't he?_

"What are these?" the Bat asks menacingly, dropping a handful of pills onto Crane's bedside table. "And what are all these chemicals for?"

"I'm-"

"These better not be what I think they are."

"They're not. They aren't," Jonathan says and can't help but gasp when the Bat throws the glass of water beside his bed to shatter against the wall and catches his wrist in a crushing hold.

"I swear it," he gasps. "I _swear_ it."

"Then what are they for?"

He takes a breath, swallowing blood from his bitten lip and wondering if the other man can feel how jumpy his pulse is. "Antipsychotic drugs. I'm developing them."

Batman fixes at him with that dark, impenetrable stare.

"F-for myself," Jonathan clarifies, and he'd be defiant if he wasn't almost being broken.

Batman holds that unnerving stare for a while longer, then releases his bruising grip on Jonathan's wrist- _please don't go_ \- and disappears before he can even catch his breath.

 

5.

 _It's a terrible idea, not at all practical,_ Crane muses from where he is being held at gunpoint and cuffed to a damn desk.

Then again, he's the one who's been captured and they're the ones about to make a hell of a lot of money. So maybe he should take it back.

But that's hard when the gun is pressing even more insistently against his cheek. Some of the other hostages are crying: loud, snivelling sobs that make Jonathan reconsider his belief in refraining from murder.

There are seven or eight criminals. Crane is sure he recognises a few of them from Arkham which lessens his chance of survival by about eighty percent.

One of them fires some theatrical shots into the air, cue more anguished cries.

"Open the fucking safe. Do it now," he rasps through his mask to a woman cowering behind a desk. She gets up on tottering heels and moves to the safe, key in shaking hands, and unlocks it. The thugs move and bundle all the stacks of money there into their bags.

  
"There's more than that. Where is it? Tell me now, bitch, or you'll be the first to die."

  
The woman starts to cry. "That's it. There isn't any more," she croaks. Jonathan guesses there must be, and so do their captors. He knows it's going to happen but hearing the shot aimed straight in the lady's head still makes him flinch.

  
"Anyone else want to try lying?" sneers the shooter.

  
A beat.

  
"Alright," Jonathan finds his mouth moving without his consent.

  
Every pair of eyes in the building turns to him.

"The Batman isn't right behind you," he smiles.

The Bat swoops and knocks the shooter down before he can even turn round. A lot of yelling and shots ensue, mingled with more sobbing hostages and guns clattering across the floor. There is a sudden silence and all of the captors are down. Police sirens sound outside and Jonathan vaguely wonders who could have called them. The Batman turns to leave and then back. He snatches the key from the shooter's corpse pocket goes to Jonathan, almost visibly weighing up whether this is a good idea (it probably isn't) and uncuffs him.

"Thanks," Crane mutters, grudgingly respectful. And then they both make the swiftest exit they can, in opposite directions, the Bat to the shadows from where he came and Jonathan slips unnoticed out of the fire exit.  
  _Superheroes_ and their stupid compassion complexes. He doesn't want to be indebted. 

 

+1

"That was stupid," Jonathan hisses, trying to mask his concern both to the Batman and himself.

He pauses, frantically wracking his mind for any medical knowledge that seems to have suddenly deserted him.

"Hey, hey, can you hear me?" he attempts. He shrugs off his jacket and tears into his shirt with his teeth, ripping off a strip of fabric.

"Hey," Jonathan says again. He starts talking, his subconscious providing its best lines of "assuring therapist" while the rest of his mind concentrates on wrapping up Batman's torn arm and keeping him alive.

"I can hear you, Crane," the Batman says with the slightest hint of amusement which isn't fair because he shouldn't be able to sound amused with those injuries and Jonathan could really just leave him there.

He doesn't.

"Ring the contact that says 'A.' from my cell and he'll come and get us," the dark knight says, hissing through the pain.

"Alright. Now stop talking," Jonathan says, distractedly fishing for the cell phone, "because that's not going to help you."  
He finds the number and dials it with hands that are definitely not shaking a little.

 

"Yes?" answers a decidedly Cockney accent.

"The Batman is... in trouble.

Don't worry, this isn't a ransom call," Crane clarifies with a smirk.

There's a slight pause. Perhaps this 'A.' knows who Jonathan is.

"Where are you? I'm on my way."

Jonathan eventually gives him the address after his mind goes painfully blank for a second.

The other man hangs up before he can.

"Jonathan-"

"Don't say that. Just be quiet," Crane whispers, taking note of the Batman's agonised breathing. It seems like hours before a typically black and clearly expensive car rolls up beside them and the door is flung open.

A tall, well-built man with white hair steps out and motions to Crane to help him lift the Bat into the car. It's difficult, awkward and every shift in their movement is punctuated by a ragged gasp from the injured man.

The drive is silent and over quickly.

By wordless but mutual agreement, Alfred nor Jonathan say anything. It's pitch black outside but Jonathan can see where they are and it shocks him to the core.  
He doesn't bring up the fact that this, this is Wayne Manor which makes the probability that the man he is currently dragging onto a plush settee is _Bruce Wayne_ very high.  
Crane tries to ignore that. It will keep him awake later, if he even gets the chance to sleep.

It turns out that the Bat has a fractured rib, a deep slash in his upper arm and another in his leg. Jonathan works silently as Alfred (who introduced himself as Wayne's butler when they removed the mask) passes him antiseptic, bandages, etc. He's not a physiologist but he knows enough, knows that a man cannot survive constantly getting injuries like this. 

Bruce Wayne recovers enough to sit up, wincing at his injured rib. "Hey," he echoes, putting up a brave attempt at a smile.

Jonathan quirks his lips into a responding half smile, slightly uncertain. He wants to ask about Bruce Wayne, about the Batman, why he's let Jonathan here. But he also wants to hurt the man that caused him so much pain.  
Then again... Batman and Bruce Wayne may be two truly different people, like he himself- the Scarecrow is a different entity to the good doctor.

"Can I sleep without you killing me, Crane?" Bruce asks tiredly. Maybe it's an attempt at humour, but it falls flat because they both know it's a genuine question. He looks exhausted, lying there swamped in blankets, his eyes dark and hair messy.

_I don't know._

"I should think so, Bruce," Jonathan answers steadily, raising an eyebrow. He gets up to leave but Bruce Wayne shakes his head.

"Stay."  _Please._

That pause seems to go on forever. Both of them are hesitant, trying to figure out what exactly Bruce is asking for. 

Crane decides it doesn't matter. It's like being given a second chance. He tries a proper smile this time and settles back beside the other man.

Alfred shuts the door with a gentle click, wisely choosing not to comment. And no one mentions it when Bruce pulls Jonathan closer to rest his head on his shoulder. They're putting their lives in each other's hands like this.

And that's how right now, with their quiet understanding and physical comfort, they can leave their hatred behind. 


End file.
